TED Conversations

seangly kheang

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

Is there any environmentally friendly way to keep the waste of nuclear power?

It seems like nuclear power plant is the only option we can secure the consumption of energy especially in the developed countries. There is a consensus that energy's waste is the problem as well the pollution it produces. However, without this source of energy it seems to find other options to get the energy though we have non-renewable energy options but very limited.
Thus, the concern is the waste of nuclear.

Topics: climate change energy environment
0
Share:

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.

  • Gordon Barker 10+

    • 0
    Feb 25 2013: Yes. Keep refining our reactors until we can suck every erg of energy out of the radioactive material and there is nothing left but inert material.

    • Alex Alcala

      • 0
      Feb 26 2013: ??? enriched Uranium or plutonium takes thousands if nto millions of years to get rid of radioactivity, you cannot "suck" every energy, actually radioactive energy is not "converted" into electricity or useful energy, radioactivity is the vehicle by which the plant converts , a nuclear plant is simply a steam engine, not a converter of radiation into electricity, although photovoltaic panels do convert some type of radiation (UV) ito electrical current and some recent studies on nanotubes (carbon) are being developed to do so, hence no there is no way to suck radioactive energy out of the nuclear waste, that s why we are burying it for thousands of years in the middle of our deserts.

      • Gordon Barker 10+

        • 0
        Feb 26 2013: Yes, if you look at it in a straight line.
        By reactor design I am implying new (or rather old) reactor designs like the Molten salt reactor (I read about these in New Scientist in 1970) which can use spent fuel rods as load fuel and reduce the radioactivity of the "ash" to 300 years.
        I would expect that subsequent reactor design and/or reprocessing options would extend this and reduce the radioactive byproducts even further.
      • thumb

        peter lindsay 30+

        • 0
        Feb 27 2013: In a uranium or plutonium reactor the vast majority (95%) of the nuclear waste is actually un-used fuel. Once you have reacted 10-15% of the uranium in the rods the waste products get in the way of further reactions. Liquid phase reactors allow total use of the fuel down to stable (non-radioactive) nuclei. The vast majority of nuclear waste that now exists can be re-processed this way. If we started building LFTR reactors now, fifty years from now there will only be a tiny fraction of the waste we are now storing.
        • thumb

          David Hubbard

          • 0
          Feb 27 2013: I appreciate your optimism. And I applaud the developement of a clean reactor. In that the cost per reactor is immense, all they need to do to take over and expand the world market is produce a much cheaper reactor. The added safety factors will make it the standard.
          I wonder what a portable one could do?

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.